Sen. McConnell: Green New Deal Vote Will Put Dems on Record

13 February 2019

Others are (tepidly) admiring the Republican leader's strategy. The principles of the Green New Deal resonate with the American people - a mission to save all of creation by investing in massive job creation.

On top of polls showing the Green New Deal is extremely popular, Nwanevu pointed to another survey showing "that 66 percent of Americans want to see action on climate change, with a 45 percent plurality favoring "immediate" action".

The joint resolution by Democrats was proposed last week by New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Massachusetts Sen.

The Green New Deal calls to "totally overhaul transportation by massively expanding electric vehicle manufacturing, build charging stations everywhere, build out high-speed rail at a scale where air travel stops becoming necessary", according to Ocasio-Cortez's website.

While McConnell seems to think that getting Democrats on the record backing the Green New Deal will help the GOP politically, the New Yorker's Osita Nwanevu noted that supporting the bold measure "isn't very fraught with political risk for most Democrats".

If any Democrat is gullible enough to agree to McConnell's vote, they could expose themselves to these sort of simplified charges, which Trump reportedly considers a key to attracting voters outside his base.

"What is their answer on climate change?"

Trent, the spokesman for Ocasio-Cortez, predicted the Green New Deal gambit would backfire on Republicans. The Democrats' plan envisions shifting away from fossil fuels and other sources of emissions that cause global warming within 10 years. "I support a green new deal".

Most of the Senate Democrats running for the 2020 presidential nomination have publicly supported the Green New Deal.

Democratic moderates have been less than enthusiastic about the proposal. He said Democrats could just simply "present" when the legislation comes before the chamber. As Vox's Matthew Yglesias points out, "They ran this exact play on the Sanders Medicare for All bill" in the Senate in 2017, when Montana Republican Steve Daines pasted a Democratic single-payer insurance plan onto one of the failed Obamacare repeal attempts.

Unlike past efforts to reduce emissions, the Green New Deal takes stock of the fact that climate change uniquely touches on nearly every part of the economy and threatens to wildly exacerbate a vast slate of social ills, including disease, poverty and structural racism.